Between 1967 and 1974, while pursuing urban projects, Krier also produced numerous drawings of architectural follies, including this work. He pictured the structures in his drawings—inspired by vernacular architecture or structural engineering—in remote locations, such as mountains, deserts, and Mediterranean islands. These visionary projects, inspired by both real circumstance and the architect’s dreams, were conceived for specific individuals, such as friends or people whom Krier admired from a distance. In these personal projects, he sought an escape from the formal and social principals of the modern masters and a rediscovery of essential methods of construction. He used fictional motifs to both reinvent architecture and shift its role as a definer of existing social and spatial structures. Krier continued to pursue an architecture that rejected modernism and contemporary technology, laying the political foundation for so-called New Urbanism, a movement that reclaimed the civic pedestrian townscape from an increasingly automotive urban society.
Gallery label from 9 + 1 Ways of Being Political: 50 Years of Political Stances in Architecture and Urban Design, September 12, 2012–March 25, 2013.
Between 1967 and 1974, Léon Krier both pursued urban projects and produced numerous drawings of architectural follies. The latter were triggered by vernacular architecture or structural engineering and generally situated in remote locations such as mountain sites, deserts, and Mediterranean islands. These visionary projects, inspired by both real circumstance and dream states, were conceived for specific individuals, such as friends or people whom Krier admired from a distance. In these small, highly personal projects he sought an escape from the formal and social principals of the modern masters, in particular, those of Le Corbusier, and a rediscovery of the essential methods of construction.
Publication excerpt from an essay by Bevin Cline and Tina di Carlo, in Terence Riley, ed., The Changing of the Avant-Garde: Visionary Architectural Drawings from the Howard Gilman Collection, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2002, p. 103.
